OSUN Theme: Human Rights
Gender, Sexuality, and Visual Resistance
Term: June 27, 2023 – August 3, 2023Level: 100-Level
Day/Time: T/Th 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM EST
All Summer Courses are accredited through Bard College.
This course analyzes international artist responses to increasing homophobia, sexism, and racism, specifically considering the gap between artists’ intention and the impact of their work on marginalized communities. We will interrogate how visual culture can both reinforce and combat stereotypes against disenfranchised people, consequently affecting laws and policies. What roles and responsibilities do artists, critics, and museums have in human rights issues? Can social media be used for emancipation when algorithms favor dominant groups? Does representing violence reinforce violence? Do documentary media makers unintentionally harm communities? How can artists be agents of change while struggling for the right to survive? We will explore visual and performance art (including film, television, and new media) since World War I and the successes and failures of visual messaging in relation to the ever-evolving Overton window, the spectrum of acceptable policies. From the “Degenerate Art” of Weimar Germany to the HIV/AIDS activist collectives of the 1980s to the contemporary women-led resistance against the “morality police” in Iran, we will examine the power struggles between artists and society. Theorists include Barthes, Coleman, Debord, Hill Collins, Linfield, Solomon-Godeau, Sontag, and Stychin.
Credits: 3 U.S./6 ECTS